STEVE HALLIWELL saluted his “absolutely brilliant” Gresford Athletic players as he brought up a century of games in charge in style.

Trailing at the interval through Aaron Hassall’s strike, Halliwell’s men turned the game on its’ head with the wind in the second period to beat hosts Rhyl 2-1.

Joe Chaplin headed home from Jake Eyre’s teasing cross, before Nathan Williams won it at the death with a stunning long-range free-kick.

Victory moved Gresford seven points of the drop zone - and the same distance from the top-six - with eight games of the season remaining.

Director of football Halliwell said: “We were brilliant, absolutely brilliant.

“It was exactly the same as the game against Porthmadog. We were 1-0 down at half-time, but we knew we had the wind in our favour and we were confident.

“We could have scored two or three in the first-half, so we fancied our chances of taking all three points, and it was a deserved win.”

On Williams’ fantastic winner, Halliwell continued by joking: “I’m claiming it.

“I told him ‘have a pop’ because he does it all the time in training, and with the wind it flew in.”

Halliwell was also pleased for man of the match Danny Holland, who produced a fantastic performance against his former club at Belle Vue.

Holland tweeted: “Playing against my old team couldn’t have gone any better and there I was being told I wasn’t good enough to play for them, how the tables have turned.”

The midfielder earned the praise of Halliwell, who said: “He was class. From minute one he was outstanding with his energy and workrate.”

Buckley Town climbed out of the drop zone after beating Penrhyncoch 1-0 in-front of a bumper crowd.

On the club’s ‘We are Buckley’ day, a 596-strong crowd saw Chris Hibbert score the only goal of the game 13 minutes from time from Phil Molyneux’s long throw.

“It was a good win,” said a pleased Buckley boss Dan Moore.

“It was nice to keep a clean sheet, which we haven’t had many of, and that gives us a chance of winning a game.

“After the first 10 or 15 minutes we were pretty good throughout, played some good stuff in the right areas and managed the game well, in terms of where we played and where we decided not to play.

“I felt we deserved to win. We conceded two opportunities for them to score, one they should have scored, which we got away with, but overall, we created five or six really good chances.

“It should have been a lot more comfortable towards the end, but we deserved the win after working really hard.”

Second from bottom Corwen are now 10 points adrift of safety after losing 2-0 at Colwyn Bay courtesy of Toby Jones’ brace, a result compounded by the dismissal of Dale Davies.

Rock-bottom Llanfair United are continuing to fight, beating fellow strugglers Porthmadog 3-1.

Carl Seliaerts, Alun Hughes and Josh Astley did the damage for Llanfair with Shaun Cavanagh netting the Porthmadog reply.